Yellow Pages may have recently become a relic of a bygone age in the UK, with Yell officially ceasing physical publication and going completely digital in January 2019, but it leaves behind an enduring legacy for yielding one of the public's most fondly-remembered advertising campaigns. The "J.R. Hartley" TV ad of 1983 was part of an effort to reinvent their brand image, after years of being primarily associated with tales of human misery. It followed an elderly gent, played by Norman Lumsden, who is seen drifting from one second hand book shop to the next in search of an elusive publication called Fly Fishing by J.R. Hartley. Returning home from an entirely fruitless expedition, he is advised by his daughter to try Yellow Pages and, after finally getting through to a store with a copy to hand, the ad closes on a twist accounting for his determination to locate such a thoroughly nondescript-sounding title - when asked for his name, he responds, "J.R. Hartley". Good old Yellow Pages! If Hartley's story doesn't raise a smile, then Joss Ackland's genial assurance that "We don't just help with the nasty things in life" certainly will. Even his example of the inescapable nastiness of life, a blocked drain, feels disarmingly quaint (it is, after all, little more than an everyday household inconvenience). This is an ad set on spewing rosiness from every orifice.
Before J.R. Hartley, Yellow Pages were hampered by the roadblock that their name had become synonymous with rotten luck and domestic calamities. The thinking behind Hartley was to represent their brand as a trusted source of guidance who could light the way down every avenue in life. Advertising agency Abbott Mead Vickers came up with the scenario of a man attempting to locate an ordinary book of immense significance to him, and it worked; the ad resonated tremendously with the public. Memorably, it was parodied in an episode of Harry Enfield's Television Programme, where Tim Nice-But-Dim is attempting to get hold of the book, mistakenly believing that its elusiveness in the ad was due to it being in high demand. Remembered, presumably, by no one but me, is that it was also parodied in a skit from the second series of The Ant and Dec Show, where an aged-up Dec was attempting to locate one of PJ and Duncan's CD singles and, if memory serves correctly, replicated Lumsden's euphoric receiver clutch from the end of the advert. I was familiar with the Ant and Dec skit some years before I saw the original ad, and it mainly confused me. Seeing the source for the very first time was such an illuminating experience, if only because it finally helped make sense of an Ant and Dec gag that had been baffling me for half my adolescence.
The book in question was fictitious, although such was the popularity of the ad that an actual book entitled Fly Fishing was written by an angling enthusiast named Michael Russell and published under the pseudonym of J.R. Hartley in 1991 - eight years after the ad had aired, although its continued resonance enabled the book to become a bestseller, and yielded two sequels, J.R. Hartley Casts Again, which continued Hartley's riverside adventures, and Golfing, which saw Hartley broaden his horizons. Unlike their advertising counterpart, copies of these books are very easy to get a hold of.
It's not hard to account for the ad's enduring popularity. It is, in a
word, charming, and fortified considerably the sincerity of Lumsden's performance. Which made it perfect fodder for those cheeky techno
artists to work their wicked ways with in the soundbite era. Hence, "JR
Hartley", a 1992 release for electronic band Fortran 5, which was
utterly bent on taking Hartley down the depths of that dreaded blocked drain and
immersing him in the nasty things in life. Here, Hartley is re-imagined
as a kind of omnipresent menace who stalks and obstructs the telephone
lines. His repeated assertions of identity are intersected with the
frantic cries of Barbara Stanwyck's character from Anatole Litvak's 1948 film Sorry, Wrong Number, concerning a woman who overhears discussion of an apparent murder plot via a crossed connection, and also a sample from Michael Franks' 1983 recording "When Sly Calls (Don't Touch That Phone)". The flurry of mismatched soundbites suggest a perilous side to telephone communication, comprised of chaos, confusion, muddled connections and ominous, disembodied voices, with Hartley's reiteration of his moniker, both forwards and backwards, becoming emblematic of this - a total subversion of the cosy, reassuring aura of the original ad and its emphasis on the redemptive power of human connection. And while the use of the Hartley sample will seem instantly humorous to those familiar with the character, Fortran 5 certainly pick up and exploit the most sinister element of the original ad - the way Lumsden insists on hitting the t in "Hartley" is surprisingly intense for such a self-professedly "nice" advert.
Actually, I suspect the reason for the ad's continued resonance has less to do with it being "nice" than with its implicit narrative, which is understatedly poignant. We never learn the circumstances under which Hartley came to be without a copy of his own book, although it can be inferred that he at one time underestimated how much it would mean to him and allowed it to slip through his fingers, whether through negligence or willfully, and later came to regret his decision. The ending strikes such a powerful chord because it makes it clear that he's been chasing a part of himself all this time, and the ultimate connection, when it seems that he and his book will finally be reunited, is an internal one. Hence, the triumph in the closing declaration - he is, in a sense, only now getting to reaffirm who he is, having successfully reconciled with the part of his identity that he let go astray, that of angling writer J.R. Hartley.
Incidentally, according to this article from Marketing Week, in earlier drafts of the ad Hartley's book was not on fly fishing but European butterflies, and in another version he was not looking for a book at all, but attempting to buy his daughter a pony, ideas that were both ultimately rejected for being "too elitist". The pony I can understand, but who out there doesn't love identifying butterflies? I assumed that Fly Fishing was chosen as the title because it is wholly generic and conveys nothing in the way of the book's actual character. So, before we get to the twist, you might be questioning why the protagonist is so driven to find this book in particular, when there must be any number of publications written on the subject of fly fishing. Truthfully, I would have preferred European butterflies. In a parallel universe where that was chosen and some opportunist had decided to pen a book on the subject under the pseudonym J.R. Hartley, I can see myself being all over that.
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